1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to displaying electronic mail messages and in particular to ordering electronic mail messages for display. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to sorting electronic mail messages based on a user-defined system of priority and displaying the messages in the order dictated by that system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Any electronic mail user who has returned from a business trip, vacation or other prolonged absence from work understands the frustration of finding dozens or even hundreds of new electronic mail messages (“e-mail messages” or “e-mails”) in the user's account. Work-related e-mails typically number in the tens or hundreds of messages per day for a user, depending on the user's position within an enterprise. After adding in unsolicited promotional messages, messages from list servers or chat groups and the like, and other messages of a personal nature (such as stock alerts, electronic bills or bill reminders, bulk-mail circulations of items from acquaintances, and news or weather alerts), the number of messages which may confront a user after returning from a departure of a week or more may border on unmanageable.
Conventional e-mail client applications such as Microsoft Outlook or Novell Groupwise allow messages to be sorted based on the time the messages were sent in either forward or reverse chronological order, alphabetically by sender in ascending or descending order, or alphabetically by subject in ascending or descending order. New or “unread” messages may be displayed with different characteristics from messages which the user has already viewed (e.g., in boldface), but generally cannot be sorted separately from the previously viewed messages. In addition, usually only one sort criteria may be employed by the user at a time, rather than hierarchical or multi-tiered sorting (e.g., sort by sender and, for each unique sender, sort by subject). Messages, whether old or new, cannot be sorted based upon user-specified criteria.
It would be desirable, therefore, to enable sorting of e-mail messages according to user-specified criteria.